By JOHN COOK, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, April 4, 2006

3GUpload is striving for that goal and is announcing today that it has landed $20 million in financing from VantagePoint Venture Partners -- the Silicon Valley powerhouse that was one of the early backers of the wildly popular social networking site.

Until recently, 3GUpload was known as a seller of mobile ring tones, graphics and games with more than 4 million members and about 30 million downloads. Based in Indianapolis, the 35-person company was started by three college students from Purdue University and Indiana University.

But the strategy and headquarters location changed recently with the involvement of VantagePoint and Bill Bryant, the Seattle entrepreneur and former venture capitalist who most recently served as chief executive of the mobile community service Mophone.

As part of the recent financing deal, Vancouver, B.C.-based Mophone has been acquired by 3GUpload, and three of Mophone's top executives -- including Bryant, former AT&T Wireless Vice President Ken Willner and former Qpass executive Michael Cockrill -- have taken top management positions at 3GUpload.

Bryant, the CEO, said the deal made sense because 3GUpload was looking to change gears, and Mophone -- an early-stage startup that had yet to launch its service -- did not meet the financial requirements of a big venture fund such as VantagePoint.

Later this spring, the Seattle-based company will unveil a new name and a new mobile music service that will allow fans of various artists to post concert photos, comments and other content from their cell phones. More community-oriented features will be added later this year, with Bryant saying that about half the recent financing round will be allocated for acquisitions.

"Our aspiration is to be the largest, most dynamic, vibrant mobile community offering to consumers," Bryant said. "Our starting point is a mobile entertainment service, and that is a steppingstone to a broader conception of mobile community."

VantagePoint managing director Eric Ver Ploeg said 3GUpload is positioned to extend the concept of social networking -- popularized by MySpace -- to the mobile arena. It could be a good model to emulate.

With more than 65 million members, MySpace has grown to prominence by allowing members to create user profiles and share photos, videos, blogs and other content from their lives. Acquired last year by News Corp. for $580 million, MySpace is adding an average of 250,000 new members every day.

Bryant, who said 3GUpload will initially focus on music, agreed with the comparisons to MySpace.

"We are aiming at that same experience, but this time using the phone as the interaction device," he said. "We are not going to be a better MySpace than MySpace, for sure. That would be sort of silly."

Because of the attributes of a mobile phone, Bryant said there are a number of ways that 3GUpload could build communities. For example, he is thinking about ways to allow members to set up private voice forums and chats. And he sees the day when members of the mobile service could notify friends where they are at as they move around a city and have that location appear through Google Maps on a cell phone.

"We are going to look at those kinds of services as differentiators; whether we build it or license it is another question," Bryant said.

Ben Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies who studies the way young people use the Internet, said a number of companies are trying to compete with MySpace on the desktop. Most of them, including a Seattle startup called Hyperboy, also have mobile initiatives in place, he said.

MySpace also is moving toward mobile. It recently inked a deal with Helio, a new Los Angeles-based wireless service provider that is targeting young consumers. In what Bajarin says could be a powerful combination, users of Helio phones will be able to access MySpace photos, blogs and other content on the go.

"One of the things that is true about this demographic is they just don't solely use their phone," Bajarin said. "So a service or a site that is both online on the desktop and allows them to take it with them ... are proving to be successful strategies."

Bryant said the company already allows people to store photos, games and ring tones on a personal computer and then have that content transferred to mobile phones.

Still, Bajarin thinks it will be tough for new competitors to chip away at MySpace. "That's where their friends are, that is what they are used to," he said. "How do you get the mass to gravitate somewhere else? And that is a much more difficult problem."

Bryant doesn't underestimate MySpace, but he said it means something that the original investor in the social networking company is backing 3GUpload. He added that social networking sites such as MySpace, Bolt and Facebook are built around the PC environment and moving that audience to the mobile world is not easy.

"Not that they can't do it, but with every company you have to have priorities," said Bryant, adding there could be partnership opportunities with MySpace down the road.

3GUpload is not without its own challenges. One of the biggest is that it must transition from a seller of ring tones and other content to a community-oriented service. Bryant -- a co-founder of Qpass and former partner at Atlas Venture -- recognizes that hurdle.

"While we have all of this traffic and users base, they come for a different reason today," he said. "We have to migrate that reason over time so they come to us eventually for mobile community and, in the interim, a mobile music community. If we succeed at that, we will do really well."

3GUpload employs a dozen people in Seattle, with plans to add another half-dozen this year. It also operates a small branch office in Vancouver and a 35-person customer service and development operation in Indianapolis. No layoffs are planned and the original founders are staying with the company.

David Hosei, who co-founded 3GUpload while a junior at Indiana, said he supports the new direction. After watching the company grow from a dorm room to an 8,000-square-foot office space, the 23-year-old said he and the other co-founders "reached our limit."

"We needed some heavy firepower in terms of money and talent," said Hosei, who is staying on as director of community and content. "That is what the VantagePoint deal really did for us."

Bryant admits that the deal, which closed in January, is a bit unconventional.

"We didn't anticipate that this is where it would lead to," said Bryant, who started working with VantagePoint last summer. "You don't go out as an early-stage, prerevenue, prelaunch company to say, 'Hey, I want to raise $20 million and go buy some things.' "